C21B-0324:
Remote Estimation of Greenland Ice Sheet Supraglacial River Discharge using GIS Modeling and WorldView-2 Satellite Imagery
Tuesday, 16 December 2014
Vena W Chu1, Laurence C Smith1, Kang Yang1, Colin J Gleason1, Asa K Rennermalm2, Lincoln H Pitcher1, Carl J Legleiter3 and Richard R Forster4, (1)University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (2)Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Brunswick, NJ, United States, (3)University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, United States, (4)Univ Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, United States
Abstract:
Increasing surface melting on the Greenland ice sheet and rising sea level have heightened the need for understanding the complex pathways transporting meltwater from the ice sheet surface to the ice edge and the ocean. Satellite images show supraglacial rivers abundantly covering the western ablation zone throughout the melt season, transporting large volumes of meltwater into moulins and to the ice edge, yet these rivers remain poorly studied. Here, a GIS modeling framework is developed to estimate supraglacial river discharge by spatially adapting Manning’s equation for use with remotely sensed imagery and is applied to supraglacial rivers on the Greenland Ice Sheet. This framework incorporates high-resolution visible/near-infrared WorldView-2 (WV2) satellite imagery, the Greenland Ice Mapping Project (GIMP) DEM, and a field-calibrated WV2 river bathymetry retrieval algorithm and channel roughness parameter. Orthogonal cross-sections are simulated along river centerlines to extract cross-sectional discharge using Manning’s equation for open channel flow. A total of 1,629,502 reach-averaged points were retrieved over 465 river networks of western Greenland in 2012, including attributes of width, depth, velocity, slope, wetted perimeter, hydraulic radius, and discharge. This work provides a method for producing spatially extensive, high-resolution estimates of supraglacial meltwater flux in river networks and into the ice sheet.
